IN THE 1970s, the city of Leeds was synonymous with Leeds Utd and its talented but hard as nails side of Billy Bremner, Peter Lorimer, Johnny Giles, and Jack Charlton, and their manager Don Revie.
Back then the side won the first division in 1968-69 and 1973-74 as well as the UEFA Cup, League Cup, and the FA Cup (albeit famously loosing to Sunderland in 1973 ). These days the club is in League One and its glory era seems long ago.
Leeds may no longer be synonymous with major football success, but over the past 30 years the city produced some of the best British bands - Gang Of Four, Soft Cell, The Sisters Of Mercy, and Utah Saints. Today it is the hometown of The Kaiser Chiefs, !Forward Russia!, and The Pigeon Detectives.
The Pigeon Detectives - Matt Bowman (vocals ), Ryan Wilson (guitar ), Jimmi Naylor (drums ), Oli Main (guitar ), Dave Best (bass ) - play the Róisín Dubh on Sunday December 14 at 8pm.
Taking flight
The Pigeon Detectives is a brilliant name for a band and came from a chance encounter with an eccentric Australian.
“It was a bit of a drunken conversation,” the Pigeon’s Ryan Wilson tells me during our Monday afternoon interview. “We were at the Leeds leg of the Leeds and Reading Festival and this crazy guy from Australia became fascinated with us. For some reason he was talking about pigeons and kept calling our singer Matt a pigeon detective. We didn’t have a band name at the time so we thought we’d take that as it was amusing.”
The band spent a couple of years writing, rehearsing, and gigging, before being signed to Leeds based independent label Dance To The Radio, which released the band’s 2007 debut album, Wait For Me.
Wait For Me reached Number 3 on the British charts and enjoyed four star reviews while The Pigeon Detectives were nominated for Best New Act at the Q Awards.
“We hoped it would go into the Top 20 but when the album came in at number three we were gobsmacked,” says Ryan. “We went from nothing to quite successful but we had been working hard for years before we actually released anything. Once we did it was amazing how quickly it happened.”
The band found themselves playing major festivals across Britain, Ireland, and the continent and discovered that fellow Leeds band The Kaiser Chiefs and London’s Dirty Pretty Things had some lessons - albeit very different ones - to teach them.
“The Kaiser Chiefs are very professional and a great example of hard work,” says Ryan. “Dirty Pretty Things are very professional but after a gig they like a knees up and you could find yourself with them at a party drunk after a show.”
Emergency
Despite lucrative offers from major labels, the band chose to stay with Dance To The Radio (“They let us have more creative control,” says Ryan, “and if there is a problem I can ring the owner. I wouldn’t be able to just pick up the phone and ring Virgin’s boss!” ) and in May - a mere 363 days after their debut album - Emergency was released.
Today, when two/three year gaps between albums are common, the 363 day gap between the Pigeon’s first and second came as a surprise.
“When we finished Wait For Me we just carried on writing,” says Ryan. “When we had time off we wouldn’t sit on our backsides watching telly, we’d be rehearsing and recording. That way we built up a catalogue of songs and could chose which ones we thought should go on the album. We wouldn’t put something out unless we felt it was good and I think this is a great album.”
With its football terrace chant choruses, razor sharp guitar riffs, watertight rhythms, the energy and urgency of the performances, and the fact that The Pigeon Detectives know how to structure a song, Emergency is a highly enjoyable collection of British guitar indie.
“We wear our influences on our sleeve,” says Ryan. “Gang Of Four we admire. We’re a bit New York and a bit Brit-pop. When I began playing guitar I was really into Oasis and the Verve. We also like The Beatles and Blondie. We like driving choruses and guitar playing.”
While Emergency reached No 5 in Britain, the reviews were very mixed (The Guardian gave it one star while Q gave it four ) but the band are determined not to let it bother them.
“That Guardian review was the first I read, sitting in a hotel room,” laughs Ryan. “There was a lot of lazy journalism in some of those reviews. We released it in less than a year and people thought it must be rushed and then wrote the review in their heads before they had heard it - and that does happen a lot.
“It’s nice to read the good reviews and not so nice to read the bad ones but none of them make any difference. We keep the same attitude throughout. We keep our heads and try to move forward. We’ve started working on the next album and release it in 18 months/two years time max.”
The band attracted controversy and accusations of being sexist last year when singer Matt Bowman was alleged to have invited a female fan on-stage and poured a bottle of water all over her white T-shirt, making her breasts and nipples visible to audience.
“That incident never happened,” says Ryan. “The girl was hot and sweaty but not wet. She did get up on stage and she was not invited up. She got up of her own accord.
“People made us out to be sexist pigs but we all have girlfriends, we all have mothers. We’re not into that kind of thing. There were 2,000 people there at that gig and they know what happened. They know the truth.”
Faithful followers
As the band are “big followers” of Leeds Utd, how did they feel when Steve Staunton was appointed assistant manager of the club - given his disastrous reign as Republic of Ireland manager?
“He’s not the manager so they didn’t care too much,” says Ryan. “Gary McAlister is the manager and an ex-Leeds favourite. With both together we are hopeful, but if Steve had been appointed manager I might have given you a very different answer.”
Despite all, The Pigeon Detectives, like many other Leeds fans in the post-Revie era, continue to keep faith with the men in white.
“Leeds Utd have a very loyal legion of fans,” declares Ryan. “We played against Histon on Sunday and 2,000 fans came down and their ground can only hold 5,000. The club has history. In the 1960s and 1970s we won FA and European cups and still have a massive following from that time - and we’ll never lose that. The debts have been cleared and success won’t come overnight, but Leeds fans are patient and it’s only a matter of time.”
Tickets are available from the Róisín Dubh and Zhivago
